“I’m not getting but a little studio unit. The least expensive model. I can pay for it out of my pension.”
She had worked for nearly thirty years in the basement of the county courthouse, keeping track of old documents. Rebecca didn’t suppose that her pension was very large. She said gently, “Thanks anyhow, Mother.”
But as they climbed the steep path on the other side of the river, approaching her aunt’s part of town, she briefly entertained a fantasy of returning here to live. She imagined her routine: each day crossing the river for her meager supply of groceries, stopping first at the library the way she used to as a child. She had been the kind of child a librarian would love, she saw now, so pale and polite and considerate, careful to check that her hands were spotless before reverently selecting yet another Louisa May Alcott book. This was in the late fifties, when other children were turning to TV, but Rebecca—pudgy even then and stodgily dressed, her father dead and her mother several years older than any of her classmates’ mothers—was not in step with most other children. She had always been the town’s Bright Girl. (“Brain” was the term they used.) She tended to stay on the fringe of things, observing from a distance, and she had noticed that what she observed was often outside the normal frame of vision. It was as if she didn’t have a frame of vision, so that during the Christmas pageant her attention might be caught by some small personal drama in the audience while everybody else was watching the stage. But she was not unhappy. She had had several friends, and in high school she’d had a boyfriend. And she was good at amusing herself when she was alone. In fact she’d been very content with things just the way they were; her set-apart position had felt comfortable, and restful.
When she grew up and left for college, the librarian gave her a going-away gift: a leather-bound blank book entitled A Reader’s Life List. But Rebecca used only the first few pages, because college was when everything changed.
College was when she met Joe.
She said, “I don’t suppose Miss Bolt still works at the library, does she?”
“Good heavens,” her mother said, “I haven’t thought of Miss Bolt in ages. I’m sure she must have passed on. Anyway, now they use volunteers, and the library isn’t open but three half-days a week.”
It was ludicrous to imagine moving back here. Rebecca didn’t know a soul.
But when she pointed that out—“See there? To me Church Valley’s all strangers”—her mother said, “Oh, piffle. You know Aunt Ida. You know the Finches. And Abbie Field and Sherry and the Nolan twins.”
“Do you still see all of them?”
“Well, of course! This town is very close-knit.”
She must mean the older people in town, though, for it was clear that she didn’t recognize the various teenagers and young mothers they met walking along Grove Street. She threaded her way between them without so much as a glance; and for all the attention they paid her, she might have been invisible.
Aunt Ida lived above Gates Drugstore. Arnold Gates, the pharmacist, had been her husband, and after his death she’d sold the drugstore but arranged to continue living in the four little rooms upstairs. Nobody would have guessed she was Rebecca’s mother’s sister. She tended to put on weight, and she dyed her hair a metallic red, and she wore frilly, too-young dresses and bright makeup. Today she was all in pink—pink strappy sandals and pink toenails, even—with some kind of gauzy pink ruching knotted around her throat. And her apartment was as cluttered as her clothing. “Now, let me clear you a path,” she said as they entered. “Oh, my, what is this doing here?”—referring to a Raggedy Ann doll grinning from the carpet. A reasonable question, since Ida had no children or grandchildren. (The great tragedy of her life, she always said.) But then, she was forever opening her doors to other people’s offspring.
When Rebecca was a very small girl, she had nourished a secret daydream that her parents would painlessly die and she could go live with her aunt. Ida was so welcoming and easygoing; her household seemed capable of limitless expansion, and almost any time Rebecca dropped in she found somebody staying a week or two—a toddler whose mother was sick, or Arnold Gates’s ne’er-do-well nephew, or, on one memorable occasion, three members of a Polish wrestling team visiting Church Valley High on some kind of sports exchange program. When Rebecca’s father actually did die (felled by a stroke just after her ninth birthday), she had felt so guilty that she’d avoided her aunt for months. And besides, her mother needed her at home.
“Well, come on in where I can look at you,” Ida was saying. “Oh, my! I would never have the courage to wear plaid with paisley, but on you it’s so artistic.”
Rebecca’s mother, moving an armload of magazines so she could settle in a rocker, said, “You didn’t tell me they were painting the hardware store, Ida. We passed it and it just about hit me in the face. Oxblood, I would call it; or, no, more like magenta. I said to Rebecca, I said, ‘What a pushy color!’ And then of course the Woolworth’s; Rebecca’s not been here since they closed the Woolworth’s, and I can’t even remember the store that used to be next to it, can you? I was trying to think. Not the jeweler’s; that was across the street. Not the pet supply. Well, I know it will come to me eventually. Wait! No, not the shoe repair . . .”
“Sit right here; move the cat,” Ida told Rebecca. “Look at what I’ve made you! Froot Loop Bark Candy, it’s called. I got the recipe out of the paper. Isn’t it pretty? The bright spots come from the Froot Loops and the lighter spots are colored-marshmallow bits. I tried them out first on the neighbors’ little boy; he was staying here a while because, oh, it’s such a sad story . . .”
“A fingernail place!” Rebecca’s mother said. “That’s what it was! Can you imagine a place devoted to nothing but fingernails? No wonder it closed!”
Rebecca took a bite from her piece of candy, which looked more like some kind of novelty toilet soap. As soon as she could get her teeth unstuck, she asked her aunt, “Is that Percival?”
She meant the cat—a fat gray tabby. “Why, no, dear,” Ida said, “that’s Daisy. Percival died last Christmastime.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Yes, I had to have him put to sleep on account of kidney trouble. I wanted Dr. More to do it before he retired; you know he’d tended Percival ever since kittenhood.”
“I myself,” Rebecca’s mother said, “have never had a professional manicure in my life and I don’t believe my nails are any the worse for it. Who knows what you could pick up in such a place? Sharing instruments with strangers—files and clippers and scissors and such.”
“Dr. More retired at the end of the year when he turned sixty-five,” Ida told Rebecca. “He said he was moving to Florida.”
“Well, he should know,” Rebecca’s mother said smartly.
There was a sudden silence, as if the sisters had surprised themselves with this momentary convergence in their conversation. Then Ida sat forward, clasping her plump, ringed hands, and said, “How long will you be with us, Rebecca?”
“Just until tomorrow. I’ve left Poppy with Zeb overnight, but I should be back in time to give him lunch.”
“And tell us about NoNo! I’m so thrilled that she’s engaged.”
This was what Rebecca loved about her aunt. Her mother had not inquired after NoNo, or Patch or Biddy either; they weren’t blood relations. Her only question had concerned her “real” granddaughter, Min Foo—how her pregnancy was proceeding—and she had worn a pinched and remote expression as she asked, because she had disapproved of Min Foo ever since her second marriage, the one to LaVon. But Ida seemed equally attached to all four girls, and still sent each of them a dollar bill in a Hallmark card for their birthdays. “Your mother says NoNo isn’t planning much of a wedding,” she said now, “but I hope she’ll change her mind. Is she thinking she’s too old? She’s not too old! Nowadays lots of people don’t get married till their forties. And she’s waited so long for Mr. Right; all the more reason to celebrate.”
“O
h, she’s celebrating, for sure,” Rebecca said. “Along with you two, I trust,” she added, sending them each a glance. Ida beamed and nodded. Rebecca’s mother gazed thoughtfully at a rainbow afghan on the floor. “What she means is, she doesn’t want anything formal. And that’s partly because of her age but more, I think, because Barry’s been married before.”
“Well, what has that got to do with the price of eggs in China?” Ida asked.
“Tea,” Rebecca’s mother said.
“What?”
“Tea in China.”
“The bride is the one who counts,” Ida said. “You tell her so, Rebecca. Tell her to have a long white dress, a veil—the works. Flower girls, attendants . . . Tell her Barry should have a best man. Maybe his son, if he’s old enough. Is he old enough?”
“He’s twelve.”
“That’s plenty old enough!”
“Well, maybe,” Rebecca said. “He’s kind of a young twelve, though.”
“How does he get along with NoNo?”
“All right, I guess. It’s hard to say. He’s very quiet. At our Fourth of July barbeque, he just sat in a corner and read a book.”
“Well, he’s going to love you-all once he gets to know you,” Ida said.
She passed the candy again, but this time Rebecca and her mother both refused. Ida herself was the only one who took a second piece. “Law,” she said, licking each finger daintily, “it seems like yesterday we three were planning your wedding! You made the prettiest bride.”
“Well, I certainly had a pretty dress,” Rebecca said, because the dress had been sewn by her mother and Ida, working almost around the clock. (She’d given them two weeks’ notice.)
“We took down all your measurements and then you lost eight pounds, remember? We got to Baltimore the day of the wedding and found you just a shadow of your former self. Right up till time for the ceremony we had to baste and pin and tuck . . . You’d turned into a skeleton! I guess it was bridal jitters.”
Rebecca had been nowhere near a skeleton; just slightly less fat than usual. And that was due to pure happiness, not to jitters. She had been so extravagantly happy! She hadn’t been able to eat or sleep. She had walked around in a trance.
Yet that wedding had made a great many people unhappy. The boyfriend whom she’d jilted, needless to say; but also her mother and Ida, who had never so much as heard Joe’s name before she stunned them with her news on an unannounced trip home. “Wait: I thought you were marrying Will,” her mother had said. And, “You’ve known this person how long? He makes his living doing what?” And finally, “I just have to point out, Rebecca, that this is mighty convenient for him. A case where a man is so needful, where a wife would be so useful. Three little girls to take care of! And their mother nowhere in sight! I guess he would want to marry!”
Rebecca had accused her mother of doubting that anyone could love her. She had left the house in tears, slamming the door behind her, vowing not to return. “I never said . . . !” her mother called, trailing her down the driveway. “I only meant . . . Couldn’t you first have a long engagement? What’s your hurry?”
A question asked as well by people at Macadam—her faculty advisor and her history professor. Why sacrifice a college degree, they said, to marry a near-stranger thirteen years her senior? Why not wait till she graduated?
And on Joe’s side, there were his daughters. Oh, his mother was ecstatic; you’d think the whole romance was her idea. And the other adults seemed delighted. But his daughters were stony-faced and resistant. They left Rebecca’s chirpy remarks hanging foolishly in midair, and they found a million reasons to mention “our mama” in her presence. More than once, in those two weeks before the wedding, they had made Rebecca cry.
So many tears, now that she looked back! It hadn’t been pure happiness after all. Part of that time, she’d been miserable.
But always there was Joe.
He drew her close and she pressed her face against his ropy brown throat. He called her his corn-fed girl, his creamy one, his beautiful blond milkmaid. (All those dairy-type references.) He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief that carried his smell of warm toast.
So was it the happiness or the misery that had made her lose those eight pounds?
Which, anyway, she had regained soon enough after the wedding.
Her mother and Aunt Ida were on the next subject by now—or the next two subjects. Her mother was saying that lately it seemed any chair she sat in was a struggle to get out of, and Ida was saying simultaneously that it wasn’t only her vet who had retired but her doctor as well, and also her podiatrist, both of them replaced by mere whippersnapper youngsters. There was a pause, and then Ida said, “Old again”—announcing yet another convergence of topics. And they sighed and started off their next two conversational paths.
* * *
For supper her mother served chicken salad and peas. She spent a long time on her preparations, because she believed in taking no shortcuts. First she had to disjoint a hen and poach it, then make her own mayonnaise with a little hand-cranked eggbeater. Rebecca was not allowed to help because, her mother said, she tended to be too slapdash. “You can set the table, though,” she said, as if offering a gift, but then she did it over again after Rebecca had finished—squaring the place mats and straightening the silver. Rebecca gave up and sat down to watch while her mother ran water into a pitcher and emptied it three times before finally letting it fill.
“I was wondering,” Rebecca said. “Instead of moving to Havenhurst, why not invite Aunt Ida to live here with you? She’s alone and you’re alone. Wouldn’t it make sense?”
“Goodness, no, she talks too much,” her mother said. “Besides, it’s not that I want to live with somebody. I just don’t want to live by myself.”
Rebecca laughed, but she understood what her mother meant.
“Also, Ida’s so messy,” her mother said. “And more difficult to get along with than you might suppose. Did you try her Froot Loop candy? It was sweet enough to give me an earache! Yet she turned down those peppermint patties at my house. Well, I know why she turned them down. She wasn’t on any diet; no, sir. She just prides herself on being the generous one. She doesn’t like to switch roles. It interferes with her theory of the universe, that I should be the one to bring her a plate of goodies.”
Meanwhile, she was putting away the napkins that Rebecca had set out and bringing forth others—neither better nor worse, just different. Rebecca smiled to herself.
After they had finished their meal (which was, as always, bland and pallid-tasting, so underseasoned that no amount of salt seemed able to set things right), they watched the news on the huge old black-and-white TV in the living room. “Oh, honestly,” her mother kept telling the announcer. “Oh, for gracious sake.” She plucked irritably at the crease in her slacks. “Look at that,” she said when a group of congressmen appeared on the screen. “Children are running the country now. Every one of those men is younger than I am.”
“Well, but . . .” Rebecca said. She hesitated. She said, “Everyone just about everywhere’s younger than you are, by now.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that, thank you,” her mother said. “But it’s more noticeable, somehow, when they’re the government. You know? If I thought about it long enough—the whole U.S. in these people’s hands—I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
“For me,” Rebecca said, “it’s just the opposite. Those men are younger than I am, too; at least a lot of them are. But I look at their gray hair and I think, ‘Old guys,’ as if I didn’t realize that I’m getting old myself.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” her mother said. “Fifty-three! A mere child.”
The congressmen faded away and a throng of soldiers appeared, wearing antique uniforms but sauntering across a field in a distinctly modern, offhand manner. They were reenacting one of the major battles of the Civil War, a reporter explained. Every attempt had been made to ensure that their equipment was authentic, a
lthough of course they were not using live ammunition.
“Men,” Rebecca’s mother said. “If they can’t find any good reason to fight, they have to make one up.”
The clock on the mantel struck the quarter hour, playing part of a hymn in golden-throated notes. One of the men fell down on a hillock of grass.
“Do you remember your paper on Robert E. Lee?” her mother asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“You invented this whole new theory about why he chose to side with the South. Remember? Your professor was thrilled.”
“Professor Lundgren,” Rebecca recalled. She hadn’t thought of him in years—his high, veined forehead and translucent hair.
“Come see him in his office, he said. He had such big plans for you! That’s when you decided to change your major to history.”
Rebecca said, “Oh, well.” She was afraid they might be working around to how she’d dropped out of college. “No great loss, really,” she said. “I don’t think it was history that interested me so much as . . . tracking down the clues, you know? Like a kind of detective story. Coming across that book no one else had bothered to read; it was the first time I’d seen the fun of independent research.”
“He wanted you to expand your paper into an honors project. But before you even got started, bang! Joe Davitch hove into view.”
“Oh, well.”
“And poor Will Allenby; poor Will,” her mother said, making a sudden right-angle turn. “He never even knew what hit him! One day you two were as good as engaged, and the next day you’d married a man nobody knew from Adam.”
“It wasn’t the next day,” Rebecca said. “It wasn’t quite as sudden as that.”
“It was as far as anybody hereabouts could tell.”
Fair enough, Rebecca supposed. It was true that she had kept Joe a secret. But at the start it had seemed so innocent—just a casual visit when he happened to be passing through Macadam. (Though if it had really been that casual, why had she not mentioned it to Will?) He had taken her for a sandwich at a diner just off campus, entertained her with a couple of funny stories about his work. The party the evening before, he said, had been a wedding reception where the bridal couple’s mothers had nearly come to blows. “We all know perfectly well,” the groom’s mother had shouted, “why your daughter is getting married in a dress with an umpire waistline!” Rebecca had laughed, and Joe had sat back and watched her with a fond, considering smile that made her wonder, suddenly, whether they already knew each other from some earlier time in her life that she had simply forgotten. But no, she surely would have remembered this larger-than-life man with the complicated upper lip that reminded her of a cursive letter M. “You were laughing the first night I saw you, too,” he told her. “You were enjoying the party more than anyone else in the room.”